Earl Wellborn
In July of 1948, the government offered a one-year term of enlistment to any 18-year-old who would enlist in the U.S. Army. At that time there was no draft, and very few people were going into the service. Most of the men and women who had served during WWII were getting out, and it left quite a void in our military personnel. Russia was threatening the Berlin Blockade, and times really didn’t look too good.
This is when I decided it was a good time to get my military service over with. Who should show up at the enlistment center but a guy from Center Point who enlisted at the same time as me. There was only one number difference between his serial number and mine. I cannot remember if his was first or whether mine was. Our serial numbers began with the letters “US.” Mine was US57420016. The US designated that we were enlistees.
The next morning they sent Earl and I, along with four or five others from the San Antonio area, to Camp Hood, Texas by bus. They gave me meal ticket vouchers for the bunch, and off we went. When we got to Belton to transfer to a bus to Killeen and then Camp Hood, we had only been gone for a few hours, so had not eaten anything during that time. We took a vote, and I turned in all our meal tickets for candy.
Earl and I were put in the same training battalion, same company, same platoon, and same squad (Co. “A,” 1st Platoon, 1st Squad). Our training began.
Earl was called Tumpy by his family and childhood friends, but at Camp Hood he earned another nickname. He had a reputation for using the expression, “Come tell Pop all about it,” whenever one of the other guys would get a little down in the dumps. It wasn’t long before he was called “Pop” by everyone who knew him.
A few years after we got out of the service, Tumpy and Dorothy moved to Boerne and leased the 1,800-acre Gilliat Ranch on Upper Cibolo Road, along with several other ranches in the area. He and I had stayed in touch, and then our wives and kids became good friends as well. We remained close friends, and they lived on the Gilliat Ranch until just a few years before his death in 2004.
John Eddie Vogt’s Musings of JEV columns are a beloved feature of The Kendall Gentleman. Revisit earlier installments, including Pearsall Texas 1962 and The Snow Story, for more of Vogt’s memories of the people and places that shaped life in the Texas Hill Country. For another window into the men who built Boerne, see the School Days, School Days column.
